ONE MORE CANDLE

BY PRECIOUSJAX
EMAIL: EVIL_PRINCESS_JACI@HOTMAIL.COM
ARCHIVE: SURE, JUST SEND ME THE LINK.
RATING: R
PART 1 OUT OF 3

Authors Note: Hopefully this will finish off my preoccupation with Vaughn's mother so I can get back to 'An End To All Things' and 'A Mother's Daughter'. But in any case, when I wrote 'waiting a while' a couple weeks ago, I had a big debate over how I wanted to write Vaughn's mother. I try to make all my stories consistent, and even able to be linked if put to it. The family I've planned for Vaughn will always be what I've planned, but the personalities might change in this fic and this fic only. Call it AU if you'd like, but it's just the way I chose not to write Vaughn's mother previously.

A/N The Sequel: I started this fic about three weeks ago, then gave up on it. After reading the April fan fiction challange on http://www.creditdauphine.net I decided to adapt it to fit the challange.


Breath, hot and uneven, tore from his lips in ragged pants. His skin burned, thousands of tiny infernos wherever she touched. The sheets were cool and smooth beneath his back. They rolled, arms and legs entangled, bodies locked together. Over and over again they rolled, across the lake-like blue sheets. With their fingers laced, she straddled him, slithering down his body, flicking her tongue across his chest. His chest was heaving, fighting for control as she rose above him.

"Michael." She said in a breathy whisper, rising above him. Her hair, dark and damp with sweat, swung seductively at her breasts. He yearned to touch, fingers trembling with the need to feel her skin. He rolled, pushing her under him in one smooth motion, taking one rosy peak into his mouth. "Michael." The moan was louder this time, taking on an air of desperation. He nibbled lightly, her fingers locking in his hair as her back arched.

"Michael!" The voice had changed now, a heavy French accent slurring her moan.

"What?" He mumbled instinctively against her skin.

"Michael." She repeated, her eyes burned into his, molten gold with arousal. "Michael, wake up."

"Michael, if you don't wake up this instant I swear to God I'm taking my pastries and driving to your sister's."

Michael sat straight up in bed, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. "What?" He looked around the room, eyes darting from wall to wall. "Huh? What?" He said, voice strained and slightly high pitched.

"Good morning." Elisa Delorme Vaughn said soberly, perching herself on the corner of her son's bed.

"Mom?" he squeaked. When he realization dawned and he was reassured that his house wasn't being stormed by SD6, he dropped back onto the bed, wrapping the pillow around his face. He swore profusely into he plain, white cotton. "What time is it?"

"A little before seven." She smiled sweetly. Michael swore again, but didn't bother to muffle it into his pillow this time. Elisa smacked his arm lightly. "Watch it. Next time, I won't bring you any of my petit fours."

Michael cracked an eye open and dared to hope. "You've got petit fours? Like, as in, with you?"

Elisa arched a brow. "It is your birthday, no?" When her son nearly knocked her to the ground in his mad scrambled out of bed, she took it philosophically with a small smile. It would have been stereotypically maternal to tell him not to run in the house. Just as it would have been to comment on the heaps of crumpled clothes overflowing from the closet in the corner. Leaving the subject of her son's lack of organization, disorder, and disgustingness and serenely followed his wake downstairs and into the kitchen.

Michael ripped off the light blue cellophane that covered the plate of petit fours. The first bite was enough to make him weep. The second was reason enough to grab another one. He did a quick estimation of about how many pastries were on the plate and did some calculations. Michael took another bite and decided that he was going to have to run approximately forty-seven miles so that he didn't need to leave his house via crane tomorrow.

" Je vous aime, Mama. Je vous aime très, beaucoup." He said as his mother emerged in the kitchen doorway.

"Âne de baiser." Elisa said with a baleful glare. "You just want me to make you breakfast."

Michael smiled boyishly and ran his hand through his hair. "Well, you know what they say about too much sugar on an empty stomach, Mom. You wouldn't want me to get sick, now would you?"

"You eat too many pastries, you get sick, your own fault." Elisa said pleasantly. "I didn't raise a chauvinistic pig, though you might live like one. You're perfectly capable of making your own food."

"Capable, yes." Michael wheedled. "But why settle for my weak capabilities when the goddess of breakfast herself is standing in my kitchen. Not to mention it's my birthday."

" The anniversary of my only son's birth." Elisa said with a snide smile. "Then maybe you should be making *me* breakfast. Twenty-seven hours of labor with you. Twenty seven hours of -"

"Pure and undiluted hell." Michael mimicked, grinning. It was a speech he knew all too well. There was one tactic that had proved unfailing. He put on his sweetest smile. "I love you, Mom."

Elisa narrowed her eyes and sighed. "Gosse." She murmured. "If I'm going to make you breakfast, the least you can do is supply me with coffee."

Vaughn basked in the glow of his victory as he crossed the room and flipped on the coffee machine. Not being a morning person, he normally had it on a timer. But since he didn't normally roll out of bed for another twenty minutes, he decided that flipping a switch was a small price to pay for whatever his mother concocted for him. "Jésus, Michael. I think you have a new form of evolution occurring in your sink." He heard her mutter. It only made him smile.

It also made him feel guilty. When he couldn't remember the last time he had given his mother a call, then the guilt was warranted. The fact that Elisa hadn't bitched about his lack of contact yet wasn't good.

It was too late to change past, he reminded himself as he waited for coffee to fill the pot enough for a mug, but it couldn't be too hard to carve time out of his schedule to make a quick call once a week. He hoped.

"Enfant, we are going to talk about your eating habits." Michael snapped back to reality and turned to his mother, who was standing at the counter beating ingredients in clear glass bowl with a wooden spoon. "Your refrigerator has molding pizza in it. You're not in college anymore."

"I know, Mama. I just happen to like molding pizza. It's an acquired taste." Vaughn tapped his fingers on the counter lightly. "I'm going to go get dressed, then your coffee will be ready, then you can rip every aspect of my life to little tiny shreds."